TAUNTON — Mayor Thomas Hoye Jr. says the time has come for everyone to understand that attaching advertisements and announcements to telephone poles not only creates blight, it’s illegal.

The mayor on Thursday authorized a “code-enforcement operation” in which dozens of flyers and posters were removed from utility poles.

Thursday’s clean-up team included a three-man crew from the city's department of public works, a Taunton police officer and City Solicitor Jason D. Buffington.

“We’re making a conscious effort to clean up the city, and hopefully this is a step in that direction,” said Hoye on Friday.

Buffington said he and the others involved spent four hours Thursday targeting specific problem locations, where complaints have been made about utility poles cluttered and covered with flyers and ads.

He said as many as 200 flyers were taken down from approximately 75 poles.

Buffington said he’ll catalog what’s been collected to identify the offenders and issue them a 21D civil-offense citation with a $50 fine.

He said violating city ordinance 14-1, which prohibits attaching “signs, placards, posters or other advertising material ... to any tree or pole under jurisdiction of the city,” carries a $300 fine.

But for now at least, Buffington said, those identified as offenders, no matter the number of poles they’ve defaced, will get something of a break by only having to pay $50.

Buffington said there’s also a state criminal statute covering illegal posting of notices to municipal poles but that he is not pursuing that avenue.

Hoye said the intent of the crackdown is less about being punitive than it is to be informative.